President's Message

Joseph Marine, MD, MBA, FACC

February 2020

ACC BOT, Diversity, and Inclusion

Dear Maryland ACC Colleagues,

I hope that everyone enjoyed the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday last month. It had special significance for me as I attended my first ACC Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting last weekend in Atlanta, where we were graciously invited to use the beautiful executive offices of the Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. King, of course, was a distinguished alumnus (Class of 1948) of the adjacent Morehouse College. As part of this meeting, many of us were introduced to ACC’s first Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Dr. Ranna Parekh. Dr. Parekh is a psychiatrist trained at Mass General with over 10 years of experience leading diversity initiatives to build awareness, increase access, and address and mitigate disparities in health care organizations. In her new role at ACC, Dr. Parekh will use her expertise and experiences to identify and explore barriers to entry into the field of cardiology, develop diversity and inclusion related educational services and projects, and lead and coordinate the Diversity and Inclusion efforts of both staff and members across the College.

The ACC BOT meeting opened with an Implicit Bias Workshop led by Dr. Quinn Capers IV, an interventional cardiologist and Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs at Ohio State. Among Dr. Capers many accomplishments, he has led more than 1000 health care professionals though education to reduce implicit (or unconscious) gender and racial/ethnic bias. I have been fascinated by the concepts of “bias” of all kinds and how it affects everyone’s “fast” or “System 1” thinking since reading Daniel Kahneman’s amazing book, Thinking Fast and Slow. Dr. Capers made an insightful and compelling case for a role for such unconscious thinking affecting medical school admissions and training and health care in general, and he introduced us to various techniques to apply “slow” or “System 2” thinking to mitigate the problem. The ACC will be working with Dr. Capers and others to bring this education to more members and staff of ACC. In the interim, you can access more information about this important topic here, here and here.

The highlight of the BOT meeting was an evening tour and dinner at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. This remarkable exhibit reminds visitors of the tremendous courage of the many thousands of Americans, such as Dr. King, who led and participated in non-violent anti-segregation protests at lunch counters, bus rides, and marches in the South in the 1950s and 60s. It is an inspiring and important American story. Consider a visit when you attend ACC.21 in Atlanta in March 2021. 

The ACC has identified Diversity and Inclusion as a key strategic imperative, and it will be the focus of many efforts in the College in the coming years, including the upcoming Campaign for the Future. Our leaders have recognized that our demographic imbalances are unsustainable, may limit our ability to ensure that the best and the brightest medical students and residents choose cardiology as a profession, and may hinder our mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health. We should all contribute to the effort. One way to help now is to participate in the ACC Census here. Another will be to participate in our upcoming state and regional Women Cardiologists (WIC) events, including our spring WIC networking event in Baltimore on April 16 and the DC Chapter WIC Conflict Management event at Heart House on February 20.

February is both African-American History Month and American Heart Month. It will be a busy one for us at Maryland ACC as we head to the ACC Cardiovascular Summit and Leadership Meeting in Washington, DC, next week and participate in several meetings with key legislators in Annapolis with the AHA and American Cancer Society to discuss ways to reduce smoking and vaping-related illness in Maryland. More on that in the next President’s Message.

Don’t forget to make plans for ACC.20 in Chicago in March. And as always, please send MDACC leadership and staff your comments, questions, and suggestions here.

Joseph E. Marine, MD, FACC